their confederates within the walls, would have plundered the city.[128] The month of May witnessed the dreary continuation of the same state of things. On the first, Conde wrote to the queen mother, reiterating his readiness to lay down the arms he had assumed in the king's defence and her's, on the same conditions as before. On the fourth, Charles, Catharine, and Antoine replied, refusing to dismiss the Guises or to restore the Edict of January in reference to Paris, but, at the same time, inviting the prince to return to court, and promising that, after he should have submitted, and the revolted cities should have been restored to their allegiance, the triumvirs would retire to their governments.[129] On the same day two petitions were presented to Charles. Both were signed by Guise, Montmorency, and Saint Andre. In the first they prayed his Majesty to interdict the exercise of every other religion save the "holy Apostolic and Roman," and require that all royal officers should conform to that religion or forfeit their positions; to compel the heretics to restore the churches which had been destroyed; to punish the sacrilegious; to declare rebels all who persisted in retaining arms without permission of the King of Navarre. Under these conditions they would consent, they said, to leave France--nay, to go to the ends of the world. In the second petition they demanded the submission of the confederates of Orleans, the restitution of the places which had been seized, the exaction of an oath to observe the royal edicts, both new and old, and the enforcement of the sole command of Navarre over the French armies.[130] [Sidenote: Conde's reply to the pretended petition.]